Tagged: TZB

It’s been a big week for the big bridge project over the Hudson. There’s been praise for the Tappan Zee Bridge funding proposal announced by Governor Andrew Cuomo which will limit future toll increases; an explanation of the new bridge design in a national magazine; and continued sparring between the state and South Nyack officials about where the entrance will be for the New NY Bridge walkway over the Lower Hudson.

Did you know … 59 years ago today, Governor Averell Harriman and Actress Helen Hayes joined the mayors of Nyack, South Nyack, Suffern and Tarrytown and a motorcade of 400 cars to dedicate the new Tappan Zee Bridge. “Nyack and the surrounding area assumes its position on the ‘Main Street of the Empire State’ today and the new Thruway bridge brings it within easy commuting range of metropolitan New York,” said NYS Thruway Chairman Bertam D. Tallamy. He was evasive about the name — because it wasn’t officially named the Tappan Zee Bridge until two months after the dedication.

It only cost 50 cents to drive across the Hudson between Nyack and Tarrytown in 1955. Today, it’s ten times that amount. Tomorrow’s fare? Stay tuned…

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“As the new bridge connecting Westchester to Rockland County emerges from under the Hudson, we know that the current skyline will soon become a memory,” writes Ruthmarie Hicks in her blog, FotosOnTheFly.biz. And for those of you who already think they spend waaaay too much time on the bridge, Hicks has collapsed two hours of action around the bridge into a sparse 14 secs with time-lapse photography.

“The transition from day into night is one of the most compelling ways to use time-lapse photography. As the sun goes down and we respond by cranking up our electrical grid, the transformation is quite dramatic,” she writes.

The Hudson River, not a western route to Asia through the Northwest Passage as Hendrick Hudson hoped it would be in 1609, but to the great port of Albany and so through canals, lakes and on land to the American frontier and all the greatness and achievement of that, remains as beautiful as the explorer found it.

Earlier this month I was privileged to take a boat ride on the Hudson from Haverstraw south to the Tappan Zee Bridge at South Nyack and back. I was the principal speaker on the history of the bridge, which was constructed in 1955 and which will give way to two new crossings in a few years. My talk covered how that bridge was built and how it brought “progress” — not always a cherished effort.

A couple of weeks ago, New York State Thruway Authority Chairman Howard Milstein was asked how high the tolls will go on the new Tappan Zee Bridge. The Chairman replied, “Do the math, and you’ll find out that it’s not going to be a high number.”

A Tappan Zee Bridge construction milestone was completed earlier this month. However, it’s not something that the thousands of motorists that cross the existing bridge each day will ever see. It’s located almost the length of a football field below the Hudson River.

The pilings for the piers that will support the two main towers of the new bridge are now in place. When the project is completed in 2018, more than 1,000 piles will be sunk in the riverbed to support the 43 piers on which the roadway will be built.

Nyack, May 14 — President Barack Obama’s scheduled address today, posing in front of the Tappan Zee Bridge construction site, is being interpreted differently by different groups. But the local gridlock caused by the POTUS visit is only a metaphor for what goes in the nation’s capital every day.

Rockland County Legislator Nancy Low-Hogan says she’s opposed to a plan presented by the South Nyack TZ Bridge Task Force last week to demolish Village Hall and replace it with a 22 spot parking lot to support the new Tappan Zee Bridge Pedestrian/Bike Shared Use Path (SUP). The plan, officially abandoned by Mayor Bonnie Christian and committee member Connie Coker two days after it was presented to the public, called for building a new Village Hall and police station at the Olsen Center property in South Nyack.